1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for producing a patent specification, and in particular to a method and system for producing a patent specification, thereby facilitating the inventor or the patent attorney to complete a patent specification rapidly and efficiently.
2. Description of Background Art
Nowadays, when a new technology or invention is created and needs to be protected, it occur to people immediately that such a new technology or invention can be protected by the intellectual property right because this is still a primary means for protecting the patent right.
When the inventor intends to file a patent application based on his/her novel technology or invention, it is necessary for the inventor to transform the technical contents thereof into the form of patent specification for filing. Essentially, the patent right is based on the technical contents of the invention, which is protected by means of the Patent Law. The patent specification itself is a legal document for representing the novel technology in a form of written words (and drawings). Therefore, there are many requirements and regulations relating to the expression of the description of the patent specification. Even one who is skilled in the stipulations of the Patent Law may still find that it is not easy to compose a patent specification, and thus, as for the inventor, unless well-experienced in filing patents, he/she will feel strange to compose the patent specification and even have wrong ideas about patent regulation.
In general, when the inventor intends to file a patent application, he/she will meet and discuss with the patent attorney or patent agent of a patent and law office about the technical contents of the invention, so that the patent attorney or patent agent can understand the technical contents, compose a patent specification according to the formal form, and submit a patent application to the Patent Office.
According to the above, the effort of the patent attorney or patent agent is still the most common way of composing a patent specification. However, the time to complete the patent specification and the quality thereof depend on the quality and practical experience of the patent attorney, patent agent, staffs of the patent and law office, or the patent engineer. Sometimes, the applicant is eager to submit the patent application because this new technology is going to be public or sell soon all over the world. Thus, the inventor requires that the patent and law office should complete the patent specification for filing as soon as possible. As a result, the patent attorney or patent agent would be always under the pressure of composing the patent specification in a short period.
Since the computer technology is so well developed now, the computer technology should facilitate the patent attorney to edit rapidly a basic patent specification, a patent specification draft or even a finished specification ready for filing based on the technical contents (not limited to characters, images or voices type) disclosed in the discussion with the inventor, thereby completing the above-mentioned laborious task of composing the patent specification and reducing the burden of the patent attorney or patent agent. By building up a way of determining, arranging and combining the description of technical disclosure content, a patent draft reference document is required and can be produced to help the patent attorney or patent agent to compose the patent specification. The content of the reference document is need to close to the essential requirements for the Patent Law, Code of Federal Regulation, Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law and Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, or close to the expressions of patent practice.
There are many books available in the market to teach the basic concepts of patent and the composition of the patent specification. For example, a textbook entitled “Patent It Yourself”, written by David Pressman, describes basic concepts of patent and briefly instructs the composition of the patent specification in view of filing in America. However, as for the composition of the patent specification, that book only provides conceptive instructions for the purpose of education, but not provides a system or method for producing a patent draft rapidly. Further, another well-known textbook entitled “Landis on Mechanics of Patent Claim Drafting”, written by Robert C. Faber, also only teaches the writing of the patent specification, also not be satisfied for a patent specification rapidly generation system.
Among the conventional patent applications, it is found that US Patent Application No. 20040128623 A1, entitled “System and method for producing a patent specification and patent application”, provides a system and method for producing a patent specification. As shown in FIG. 1, the above-mentioned background art provides the patent agent or patent attorney with a patent draft for reference, in which a form 100 is provided to have a plurality of text fields such as the field 110 headed “Title of Invention”, the field 120 headed “Field of Invention”, the field 130 headed “Background of Invention”, the field 140 headed “Detailed Description of Invention”, the field 150 headed “Advantages of Invention”, the field 160 headed “Essential Features”, the field 170 headed “Preferred Features”, and the field 180 headed “Drawings”. When a user inputs all of the text fields, a patent specification draft can be produced correspondingly.
However, the form 100 shown in FIG. 1 corresponds to the standard form of a patent specification for filing in America and is suitable for the patent attorney or patent agent only. The inventor, members of the research and development department or general staffs are not familiar with the form 100. In general, when the inventor develops a novel technology, method or product, preferably, the inventor should write a disclosure of technical content, a technical report, a thesis in journals, or even a working diary to disclose and explain the developed technical contents. Further, when the inventor has proposed his/her new technical development result and intends to file a patent application for protecting the patent right, most applicants appeal to the patent and law firm to compose a patent specification. Since the form shown in FIG. 1 is not a form suitable for the inventor or R & D member to disclose the new developed technical contents, it is still necessary for the patent attorney, patent agent or patent engineer to spent their time and effort to study and digest the developed result disclosure of the invention, and then to fill the individual text fields of the form shown in FIG. 1 to produce a patent specification correspondingly. Obviously, the method for producing a patent specification disclosed in FIG. 1 only belongs to a trans-pasting of text blocks, which only trans-pastes the input data to another text block without judging, arranging, combining and linking the technical disclosure data input by the inventor or R & D member to produce a patent specification. FIG. 1 should be changed and improved to close to the inventor for input and then output the patent drafting which matched with Patent Law.